More on my fiction writing

November 21, 2017

Phoenix Confidential: OCB

The Organized Crime Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department was created in the 1974 when Chief Larry Wetzel sent Detective Sgt, Oscar Long to clean up the old Intelligence Bureau, full of place-holders and shady types compromised by the mob. His goal: Replace the old "subversive surveillance squad" with top investigating officers to dig into organized and white collar crime for prosecution purposes. The old squad just gathered names to put in the intelligence files. The new one intended to put made men and corrupt pols on the defensive in one of America's gangland playgrounds. Lt. Glenn Sparks requested a federal grant to fund the OCB and it was approved in a very short time.

OCB attracted some of the most gifted detectives and supervisors in the department, indeed in the nation, including Long, Sparks, Lonzo McCracken, Jim Kidd, Cal Lash and A.J. Edmondson. I leave out some names at the request of the detectives — safety is still an issue. Over the next several decades, the OCB was involved in the most important investigations in the state, from the murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles to corruption of high city officials and the depredations of the New Mexican Mafia (New Eme). Lash went on to serve as Administrative Sergeant for two police chiefs.

In a city where, as the blurb for my new novel goes, "gangsters rubbed elbows with the city’s elite amid crosscurrents of corrupt cops, political payoffs, gambling, prostitution, and murder cloaked by the sunshine of a resort city," the Organized Crime Bureau was Phoenix's Untouchables. And this was real, not fiction.

Kidd was a good, quiet investigator who developed, along with McCracken, cases that resulted in the arrest and conviction of land-fraud king Ned Warren, as well as a case that was leveraged into the information that lead to the arrest and conviction of all of the killers of Don Bolles. As to the latter, investigators felt they were stalled by prosecutors and above from going up to the top of the conspiracy. Lash saw suspected corruption in the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). He formed a group of officers that ran for, and were unanimously elected to the FOP leadership. The corruption was found and the people were all tossed out of office. Before they could be moved out, one shot himself to death with a pistol that had been bought by the lodge for auction but had disappeared instead.

It was dangerous work, and not only in the paranoid months after Bolles' 1976 assassination, when some wondered if the Mafia had changed its predisposition against whacking reporters or cops. Arizona was a laboratory of white-collar crime, and the suspects included leading businessmen, politicians and city officials. These powerful bad apples kept trying to plant information that Wetzel or the OCB detectives were dirty. The political pushback against the investigators was enormous.

Wetzel warned the detectives, Long said, that "if anything went wrong in any of (the investigations) that he would surely be fired. He always said if we suspect criminal activity, we have to investigate it. He said that if he gets in trouble or gets fired, he would much rather it be for trying to investigate sensitive matters instead of knowing about them and not investigating them." OCB took down several corrupt bureaucrats, including a City Manager, City Attorney, and finance director. Some went to prison.

They also faced headwinds within law enforcement. For example, Mo Berger, the County Attorney, kept sandbagging cases against Ned Warren. He admitted to McCracken that Harry Rosenzweig, the merchant prince and GOP boss, had something on him (some speculate Berger had been caught on film at a whorehouse). McCracken played the tape for Rosenzweig and Berger was out within days. Prosecution of Warren went forward. In another instance, a detective-analyst from the old Intel Squad was suspected of hiding files pertaining to the Bolles investigation, including the infamous 851 file.

As the Chicago Outfit withered and land fraud went legit, new forms of organized crime took hold. One was the New Mexican Mafia, or New Eme. Edmondson took part in the war against New Eme when he came on board in 1999 and it was tearing the state apart. "I think they were suspected of 27 homicides in an approximate 30 month period and they were absolutely vicious," he recalled. "They'd be drinking beer with you on Monday night and then having you whacked on Wednesday morning. During our investigations at times, it was hard to keep up with who was killing who."

After the gang threatened the head of the state Corrections Department, OCB launched a huge investigation, along with the FBI Violent Street Gang Task Force Squad. Two wires were tapped. Detectives worked 12-hour shifts. Among the criminals they pursued were two who ran an auto theft and narcotics ring and were suspected of murdering two confidential police informants. The investigation culminated into a huge round up.

OCB was a victim of its own success. The political heat never abated. New chiefs were not as supportive as Wetzel. An investigation into drug use in pro sports brought down pressure from top businessmen. And 9/11 sent the department into a "flavor of the day" mode in fighting terrorism. A hiring freeze left the department with hundreds of vacancies, hard pressed to perform its basic duties. Not surprisingly, without focus on organized crime and white-collar offenses, Phoenix is again an underworld capital.

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I am retired from the Kansas City OCB and I have a true crime podcast. Can you pass along my invitation to do a phone interview about their experiences. My Podcast and contact is at www.ganglandwire.com

This is absolute drivel. Ned Warren was not convicted of anything by PPD. Ever. Chuck Hyder's Maricopa County Attorney's office sent Warren to the Arizona State Prison by specifically AVOIDING the Phoenix Police Department because of the internal corruption of its Organized Crime Bureau. They convicted Warren of underlying land fraud and the subsequent attempt he made to bribe a County Attorney investigator to destroy the files of the land fraud case. Because of the subsequent charges of bribery, Warren was non-bondable and had to make a deal. When he lied to prosecutors at the County, he was sentenced to 54-60 years in state prison. That was the end of Ned Warren, who died in prison. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) worked these cases along with County Attorney Investigators, because PPD's Organized Crime Bureau was considered unreliable. In fact it was later shown that three officers on that unit were corrupted by organized crime. By 1984 they were gone from that unit.

Police departments dont convict!
The prosecution by Chuck Hyder(currently a federal prosecutor)was a good thing. However the Maricopa County attorneys office investigation at the instruction of interim county attorney Don Harris(who advised he ordered Frank Murray to prosecute the case after Harris took over on the hasty departure of County Attorney Moise Burger, allegedly upon the instruction of Harry Rosenzweig) and subsquent conviction by Chuck Hyder's staff, including Frank, of Ned Warren was also aided by information previously gathered by non corrupt officers of the Federally Funded White Collar Crime Unit that that was attached to the PPD OCB.
Frank has pointed out some accurate things but that does not make the entire column "absolute drivel."
It is a fact that PPD White Collar Crime Sgt. Oscar Long told Warren in an interview, that he would die in prison!
Thanks Frank for your input.

In May of 1979 as a Sergeant in Internal affairs, I/A, I was transferred to the Administrative Sergeants position in the Organized Crime Bureau, OCB. Neither my Lieutenant in I/A or the Captain in OCB at the time knew why. I was instructed to see the police chief.

The chief advised he “had been told by the FBI that a member of the OCB staff had been identified as a Mafia associate.” The Chief also told me there were “files all over the OCB he wanted some order” brought to that problem.

Shortly after I transferred to OCB, the detective file clerk in the OCB Analyst section came into my office and said “you aren’t fucking getting me, I am retiring.” I said “what?” and he repeated himself. Shortly thereafter I discovered the “851” file and the index cards used to find them were not in the file room but in OCB detectives' possession.

I spent the next few months working on the Chiefs orders. Eventually the pressure of investigating my fellow officers (I had already been in I/A and also the pressure previously investigating corruption in the police union in 1975) I asked for a transfer.

I was transferred to the Administrative Sergeant's position in the Chief's office where I served two police Chiefs before going back to Uniform Street Patrol and eventually SAU (SWAT) and I/A again before retiring in 1991 as the Sergeant in Charge of the Narcotics Intervention Unit at Sky harbor Airport.

After my police career I took five years off and then in 1995/96 I “Urban” backedpacked and walked (not hitchhiking but occasionally accepting a ride when offered) across America arriving in Washington DC on Earth Day.

In 1996 I became a Private Investigator and owned a High end Security guard company and a diamond transport business. At almost 78, I continue to work and still believe there is no such thing as a “free cup of coffee.”

Note: For many years I have asked many reporters I know to write that the Don Bolles Murder was not a onetime singular event but a continuation of events that I believe started when Al Capone went to prison for TAX evasion. And this activity continues to this day.